This administration, much to my venom filled contempt, is most likely less transparent than the Bush Admin.

This is why I didn't vote for the fucker.

Once these nutbags find out that they can cut someone's head off in broad daylight, they're gonna start making more elaborate plans with higher body counts. The U.K and Europe may be in for a rude awakening.

danwismar wrote:"When you leave our lands", he said, then we can live in peace...says the Muslim who murdered a British soldier...in England.

I know I know.

But why again are we there? Why don't we just back away and let these idiots kill eache other? Every day gas/oil production gets more diversified and it is one great big open market. Those idiots want to make money, too.

danwismar wrote:"When you leave our lands", he said, then we can live in peace...says the Muslim who murdered a British soldier...in England.

Why don't we just make them Cuba?

When you say that, are you asking for us to make England Cuba or Boston Cuba?

Or do you believe it all goes away if we simply divest ourselves of any and all intersts in the Middle East and let what happens there happen there?

Genuinely asking. I think there's no chance of that working out well but if there is a sliver of a chance it's because the radical muslim groups are so splintered that in many cases their hatred for each other nearly equals their hatred of the west.

One reason is that the vacuum created by our absence will allow the flourishing of people who are not content to leave us alone...ever. They (Taliban, AQAP, al Qaeda) would again be plotting to fly airliners into our skyscrapers...or worse.

I am no fan of a long-term presence in Afghanistan though. It's been a death trap for everyone who has ever tried to be there, for centuries. And you won't hear me waving the flag for U.S. action in Syria either, where the ant-Assad forces are likely to be equally malign. All we can do, as in Iraq, is try to train political leaders, police and military to run their own country in a civilized, self-governing way, and then let them make the best of it...or not.

And the corrupt relationship between us and the Saudis is a bipartisan scandal and an ongoing disgrace. But again, the alternative to our influence there is greater Chinese or Russian influence...either harms our interests.

It matters not to the Islamists that the US has intervened on many occasions to rescue Muslims from non-Muslim dictators, or from brutal nominally Muslim dictators...Kosovo, Bosnia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan. Call it folly...call it hubris...call it a waste of time...we intervened in good faith...and on the side of innocent Muslim citizens...and we get no credit, let alone thanks.

The fantasy is that if we did leave, we could have something resembling peace with them.

"I believe it is the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting." H.L. Mencken

Muhammad (PBUH) was not born in Afghanistan. Or Iraq. Arabic Muslims invaded Afghanistan in the 9th century AD. So when are they going to get out of there and give Afghanistan back to the Afghan people? The Umayyad Caliphate swept through the area that is now Iraq in 7th century AD. When are the Muslims going to give Iraq back to the Babylonians???

You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves-----Abe Lincoln

Let me tell you, if any of you douchebag empty headed stuffed suit nanny politicians tries to fuck with my bacon, I’m going after you like a crazed chimpanzee on bath salts. -----Lars

danwismar wrote:One reason is that the vacuum created by our absence will allow the flourishing of people who are not content to leave us alone...ever. They (Taliban, AQAP, al Qaeda) would again be plotting to fly airliners into our skyscrapers...or worse.

I am no fan of a long-term presence in Afghanistan though. It's been a death trap for everyone who has ever tried to be there, for centuries. And you won't hear me waving the flag for U.S. action in Syria either, where the ant-Assad forces are likely to be equally malign. All we can do, as in Iraq, is try to train political leaders, police and military to run their own country in a civilized, self-governing way, and then let them make the best of it...or not.

And the corrupt relationship between us and the Saudis is a bipartisan scandal and an ongoing disgrace. But again, the alternative to our influence there is greater Chinese or Russian influence...either harms our interests.

It matters not to the Islamists that the US has intervened on many occasions to rescue Muslims from non-Muslim dictators, or from brutal nominally Muslim dictators...Kosovo, Bosnia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan. Call it folly...call it hubris...call it a waste of time...we intervened in good faith...and on the side of innocent Muslim citizens...and we get no credit, let alone thanks.

The fantasy is that if we did leave, we could have something resembling peace with them.

Can't find anything to disagree with here. And so what you're saying, Dan, if I'm understanding you correctly, is we're pretty much fucked?

danwismar wrote:"When you leave our lands", he said, then we can live in peace...says the Muslim who murdered a British soldier...in England.

Why don't we just make them Cuba?

When you say that, are you asking for us to make England Cuba or Boston Cuba?

Or do you believe it all goes away if we simply divest ourselves of any and all intersts in the Middle East and let what happens there happen there?

Genuinely asking. I think there's no chance of that working out well but if there is a sliver of a chance it's because the radical muslim groups are so splintered that in many cases their hatred for each other nearly equals their hatred of the west.

OK, this is totally against my bettr judgement, but Imina give it one shot and its my last word as I don't want no bad blood.

I think that individuals are crazy at times, mostly for psychosis or some medical reson. Whole cultures are not crazy. They are rational actors in theior own minds. What they can be are a-holes. There is no such thing as cultural relatvity in contemporary times, only in history when you add the context of unwillful ignorance.

Thus these Muslim fundamentalist a-holes are rational actors in their own minds.

So what can their possible motivations be?

Well, there's the almsot sprem-like single purposed drive toward evangelization of Islam and Shiria law. But, you know, I'd say fundamentalist Christians share that one. It doesn't seem to casue them to off some poor guy's dome on a street and blow up kids. I rule that out as oversimplification.

It could be that their elite or wannabe elite are sick of getting the sloppy seconds. So they want the GWOP, CREAM, dolla dolla bill ya'll. Sounds like an evangelicist to me. But the west picked winners in the 40's and 50's and set them up as kingpins, racateering-style, so we could get the oil flowing. When those pesky unaligned nationalists crept up in Egypt and Iran, the superpowers managed to co-opt them by hook or by crook. It was Chess, the musical. We just did. It's a fact. You really can't credibly argue this.

The governments we put in place established really brutal ecurity and intelligence arms that were all powerful. They also applied traditional middle estaren customs of brutality and torture. Just like everyone in this biz, brutal or not, sometimes they got it right and sometimes they got it wrong. Over the years they pissed off an entire population due to their brutality.

So you have this mix or wanna be elites who see one family picked at almost random to be stupid-wealthy and all powerful, you have a population that is dirt poor and caught up in the colateral damage of the security forces, you have clerics who have different motivations. Some just want to line their robes and others believe this fundamentalist stuff as the ruling tended to be secular at the time (Saudi Arabia was different in embracing strict Islam). If you are one of these who want power what is the single easiest way to manipulate people into doing your bidding in an envrironment where dissodence is automatic death by torture?

Finally, I have no love for the brand of Islam that is practiced as I see it. And yeah, I've read alot about it and some of the Queran. Like any ancient holy book it is reflective of the times it was written. There's some good stuff I see as universal truth and ther's some, um, err, I have no desire to be Soloman Rushdee via The Cleveland fan so that's all I have to say about that.

Soooo..... I'm not the youngest member on the board. I remember the 70's and 80's. My folks never missed them some Walter and I watched along each and every night and always had an interste in current events since probably 72 Munich. Until we got involved with forces on the ground in Kuwait, other than the Lebanon bombing,m when again, we were over there, I don't recall any of this sort of violence and terrorism in the west. None. nada. Zip. Zero.

Being a practical man who didn't want to pay $ 12 a gallon, I understood the real politik of why we were there. I never engaged in limosine liberal intellectual dishonesty when it came to oil.

Oil and gas production sources and technology has changed drastically since 1973. The major producing regions have seen a sea chyange. Oil is sold as an apolitical global commodity by those who want to make stupid ammounts of money. Oil production is no longer a tool of nationalists or any pan-regional power brokers. they tools and ambitions are much more naked and transparent now. Oil is a commodity placed on a merket. It don't matter if it comes from the Arab peninsula, North Dakota, the canadian sands, the steppes of the caucassus or now Columbiana County. The biggest myth out there is "American energy independance". Only a toadie moron believes that. And again, from my perspective it kind of is what it is.

So I put aside the macho Toby keith shit. Whether we show "pride" and kick ass or ignore the basterds make zero differnce to me. I could care less. I ask what's in it for me, for us, as Americans, casue I'm still basiclly a nationlist.

I look at all this and I listen to the words coming out of these terrorists own mouths. I read the transcripts from the now dead bin laden's rants. They are TELLING you why they are doing this shit to us. In their minds they are guerilla warriors and rational actors. I have to conclude that Occum's razor applies just fine here.

They are doing this shit becasue they are a) not at all incorret in many ways as we are in wars over there (just a fact) and play into their hands like simpletons and b) they are using/manipulating those who they would have the power over and use the easiest tool in the history of mankind to manipulate the ignorant and poor.

So I now ask myself what is the definition of insanity?

And I ask myself what is the real politik benefit for us when the nature of energy production and the energy market is what it is in 2013 and not 40 years ago.

And I come to what I think is a pretty reasonable and logical conclusion.

I could give two shits about bringing democracy to the middle east in some sort of neo-con secular evangelical global movement. You can't fix stupid nd the best way for these things to occur is to let them occur via the weight of stupid institutions crashing upon themselves. Star wars spending didn't kill euro communism. Levi's jeans and rock and roll (if you can call Billy Joel rock and roll, I digress) and institutionlized sloth and corruption did. same thing will happen in the middle east. Don't send soldiers. Drop leaflets of Kate Upton in a bikini if we want to change them that badly.

But I don't want to change them. If they want to be stupid thay can.

And yeah, when it comes to being a nationlist, I'd now add Isael to that. they've had 55 years to get established and it's up to them if they insist on having a state in the single most hostile envirpomnet huimanly possible to the Jewish faith. Not my job to ensure that.

So my assumption is that if we disaapear, the oil will still flow. Too much ney to be made. If it hiccups, the market will react some but life will go on. Other sources' taps will be turned up to make money when the prices rise and in turn the prices will regulate. If they don't, alternative energy will be more feasible and pick up the slack long term, which may not be the worst thing either, but the oil market isn't stupid, and they know this. I believe in the market in this case.

I wish the US would just say, "A pox on all you idiots. You're all dead to us. You want 12th century sheria law? You enjoy that. We're gonna order a big box of popcorn an when we leave as the common enemy uniting you idiots against us you'll turn on yourselves and fight to the death against each other, as you have in every single historical instance since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Because that is all your sick broken ignorant culture knows how to do. Adiaos Mother fuckers. Send us a post card.

And I seriously, honestly think terrorism in the sense we know it will abate against the west.

Otehr than the military industrial complex and zionist lobbies, there is no rational reason for us to have the presence in the middle east that we have. And yes, that includes our good deeds trying to intervene for humanitarian reasons that are never recognized.

In this instance, isolationism via containment will work.

Last edited by jb on Fri May 24, 2013 10:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

danwismar wrote:One reason is that the vacuum created by our absence will allow the flourishing of people who are not content to leave us alone...ever. They (Taliban, AQAP, al Qaeda) would again be plotting to fly airliners into our skyscrapers...or worse.

No. They really don't care about us as much as you think. Theycare about themselves.

First, they'll turn on whomever is left as the ruling power. If the ruling power fights fire with enough fire they'll hang on indefinately. If the ruling pwer topples, they'll then turn on each other as to who assumes the vacuum. This cycle will then continue indefinately until the culture reaches the age of enlightenment.

This has always, always, always happened in the middle east. All they know how to do is fight. It is time for us to stop being their huckleberry. Unless a huge segement of our lobby wants us to be their huckleberry. And that's not just crazy conspiracy shit. It's how our sysetm works.

Anti-Americanism is a means to ann end. Once that end is reached, the means disappears.

Besides, if we are ever seriously concerned all we need to do is bribe the enemies of the plotters covertly to keep an ear on the ground covertly, and drop drones on them if they target us.

Oh and, "All we can do, as in Iraq, is try to train political leaders, police and military to run their own country in a civilized, self-governing way, and then let them make the best of it...or not."

I like you danny, but BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Not even geo-political socialism will fix stupid. Snd even if it could, why is it our job? We don't have the jack.

jb, interesting takes. Some questions I have (I don't want bad blood either. This isn't as big a thing as Chief Wahoo. j/k)

I've always assumed everyone agreed that as long as we are richer than them, they will hate us. Photos of Kate Upton won't foster hope; they'll prove to them we are immoral. Russia saw Western culture and wanted in- much of the Middle East sees it as proof we need to be killed. (Hollywood, they really hate you.) If you think that can be changed, then you cannot rule out an eventual shift toward peaceful self governance. I know the foothold has been slippery, but Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, and other places have had recent moderate periods, no?

In the meantime, once they are left alone with their rich ruling class, we'll still be an extension of it, in their eyes. Also, some of those governments will be looking to work with the U.S. on various initiatives and we will be unable to keep saying no- it would be impossible for us to remain firmly isolationist as they are spiraling down the toilet and asking for humatarian help.

What happens when the tsunami of refugees begins to flood the West, in earnest? Bringing sharia law with them?

And the first thing they'll do won't be turning on themselves, it will be turning on Israel. Selling out such a solid ally is not a good option. It's something a Middle Eastern country would do. And what signal does that send to other allies?

And would we just turn a blind eye to their procurement/development/protection of currently held nuclear weaponry? Yikes. Our absence will create an opportunity for others who hate us (eg. in South America) to line up new partnerships. They might even promote war and genocide.

Am I off base? Feels like I am just getting started. Appreciate the POV.

I've always assumed everyone agreed that as long as we are richer than them, they will hate us. Photos of Kate Upton won't foster hope; they'll prove to them we are immoral. Russia saw Western culture and wanted in- much of the Middle East sees it as proof we need to be killed. (Hollywood, they really hate you.) If you think that can be changed, then you cannot rule out an eventual shift toward peaceful self governance. I know the foothold has been slippery, but Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, and other places have had recent moderate periods, no?

In the meantime, once they are left alone with their rich ruling class, we'll still be an extension of it, in their eyes. Also, some of those governments will be looking to work with the U.S. on various initiatives and we will be unable to keep saying no- it would be impossible for us to remain firmly isolationist as they are spiraling down the toilet and asking for humatarian help.

What happens when the tsunami of refugees begins to flood the West, in earnest? Bringing sharia law with them?

And the first thing they'll do won't be turning on themselves, it will be turning on Israel. Selling out such a solid ally is not a good option. It's something a Middle Eastern country would do. And what signal does that send to other allies?

And would we just turn a blind eye to their procurement/development/protection of currently held nuclear weaponry? Yikes. Our absence will create an opportunity for others who hate us (eg. in South America) to line up new partnerships. They might even promote war and genocide.

Am I off base? Feels like I am just getting started. Appreciate the POV.

I think you bring up unpleasant realities. Sometimes there aren't good choices. There are just choices.

I can't for the life of me undersdant our relationship with Israel. never could. Never will. I don't even understand whythey are our ally except to help us protect their own interests or to stand down. Hell, turn 'em loose. F it.

Don't take in the refugees. Period. And culturally start to ract like France & stop being so PC. Stop the cultual relativity bull crap.

As for Egpyt? The deal is done. When a secular dictator goes down in that region islamic theocracy now comes into the void. We can't control that unless we want to fund dictators and stay involved, begatting terrirosim against us. It really is that sum zero of a choice. It is up to the Egyptians to denouce the Muslim "Brotherhood". Ask lara Croft how enlightened these people are. F 'em.

It is not my role in Ohio to prevent genocide in Syria. Do I feel badly about it? Of course. But do I want my son to go die stopping it becasue they wont?. Sum zero choice. It's easy. F 'em.

When it comes to ignornt populations, it is often just the high school cafetaria mentality. They may still be envious and hate us for stupid reasons of class warfare, but at least we don't have to be involved. So again, F it. They may see us not as the Great satan but as the Great santa, who could come in and make it all better with the waive of a wand if we wanted to and then they have this naive notion that American is responsible for their day-to-day existance. Hey, who wants to extend the welfare state mentality globally casue that's what this is asking. I sure don't. F it.

This stuff is just not always our burdon to always bear.

IMhO, if yone can move aside the military & military appartis lobby and we just look at real politik with the state of energy now, which is not likely gonna happen in our system on government, the next POTUS could win big with a new foreign doctrine ala Truman, Nixon, Regan. The new doctrine would be "The Global Community Comes of Age". You all want independance, You all want the US out. have at it.

See, I get accused of gobbling liberal knob and end up sounding like Rand on foreign policy....

Oil and gas production sources and technology has changed drastically since 1973. The major producing regions have seen a sea chyange. Oil is sold as an apolitical global commodity by those who want to make stupid ammounts of money. Oil production is no longer a tool of nationalists or any pan-regional power brokers.

I don't think we're there to make friends who'll sell us their oil. I don't think we're there because we genuinely give two shits about Israel or Kuwaitis or Syrians or anyone else. I think we're there, because (according to the numbers in your link), that's where over 1/3 of the world's oil production is, and our fear is that a (further) destabilized middle east would likely disrupt that production, and with it the world economy.

(This was composed before reading the later posts by Greg and jb, btw)

A lot to respond to, but glad to have the dialogue, jb.

First...I don't think it's "our job" to try to remake the entire Middle East into suburban Omaha, because as you say, we don't have the jack or the responsibility. I do believe it was our job to leave behind a functioning self-government in Iraq, on the "you break it, you bought it" principle. It would have been tremendously irresponsible to oust Saddam, and then condemn the Iraqi people to life under an even more brutal al Qaeda sharia regime. And while that may in fact be the eventuality, if it is, it will be because of a failure of their own political leadership and the will of their people...not because we failed to deliver what we promised...a chance to govern themselves as a free people.

And as fucked up as the Iraq situation continues to be in the aftermath, it turns out to be one of the more stable situations in the region...relative to Libya, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, the PA, etc., following the utter folly that people are still, for some reason, calling the Arab Spring.

And while you're right that oil and MIC are two big reasons we are involved in the ME, they aren't the only ones. There is a tremendous book on the history of the U.S. in the ME that I'd recommend to anyone. Power, Faith and Fantasy, by Michael Oren. (When Oren wrote the book he wasn't Israeli Ambassador to the U.S...but he is now.) Even people who see shadowy Zionist lobbies working to force America to do things we wouldn't otherwise be doing might be able to appreciate it for what it is...a wonderfully-written and interesting history book.

I think you overestimate the ways that the changing world oil market...and the ways it may begin to free the West from its slavish kowtowing to Middle East despots...will cause the jihadists to turn their attentions away from their goal of a worldwide caliphate. (For that matter, the stubborn insistence by lots of otherwise smart people that a settlement of the Israeli -Palestinian issue would function to reduce Islamist jihadism vs the West is, I think, flat wrong...though I don't think you or I will live to see the day that happens anyway)

As I alluded to before, the relationship with the Saudis sickens me. We buy their oil and sell them fighter jets, while they maintain one of the most repressive, sick regimes in the world. It's above the reach of Presidents of either party to change it, and it makes all our talk of democracy elsewhere ring hollow. I would love to see the day when we can give them the collective American finger, though I don't think I'll live that long. We rationalize it because we are pretty sure that the rule of Kings there is preferable to the rule of Islamists...and we're probably not wrong about that.

Not sure what you mean by the "ruling power"...whether it's the ruling superpower (us) or the ruling power in the Islamic world...right now, Iran. And the center of global terror right now is Tehran. To them and their extremist brand of Islam...which is compatible with Saudi-based Salafism...Wahabbism...however you refer to it, we are, and always will be the Great Satan...and Israel the Little Satan. You are operating on the premise that the mullahs of Iran are rational actors. Based on what I have seen, I respectfully disagree.

Hilarious too, how you talk about Israel "insisting on having a state in the most hostile environment possible". How dare they "insist" on having a home where they've lived for 3000 years, when they could just as easily have created their country in say...Europe...oh, wait. Maybe New Mexico somewhere...they like desert. Nothing about the people who make it "hostile...to wit...the followers of the prophet who came up out of the Arabian peninsula in the 7th century and started "evangelizing" with rape and murder and oppression from the Levant to the gates of Vienna. What was the world oil market like then? How was North Africa...or Spain...or Babylonia...infringing on "Muslim lands"?

Fact is, Israel HAS gotten it together in 65 years...much to the shame and embarrassment of the poor, dysfunctional societies all around them, the ones with the ruling despots who channel the dissatisfaction of their own oppressed people into hatred of Jews, and of the very existence of a Jewish state.

What were the world oil market and the military industrial complex like in the 14th century, when the namesake of Tamerlan Tsarnaev was doing his thing?

http://www.americanthinker.com/2005/10/ ... y_tam.htmlJustifying the wholesale killing of infidels...for no reason other than that....is not a modern day phenomenon...is all I'm saying. Modern western freedom...and its accompanying debauchery is only taking humanity farther and farther away from the religious piety that radical Islam demands. Our leaving the oil fields of Saudi Arabia isn't ever going to mitigate that.

No changes in world oil markets will change the fact that they interpret their holy book as justifying the killing of anyone who is not Muslim, and insinuating themselves into every open society in the world, to implement sharia law worldwide. Since that will realistically never happen because it is, and will always be incompatible with western values of, for starters, equality of the sexes, and the rule of secular law, the end of conflict with Islam is not in sight.

There are isolationists on both the left and right. I respect your view, but I think it is misguided to suggest that Islam will somehow de-radicalize itself based on the actions of the United States. There are millions of "moderate" Muslims of course, who do not take the Koranic imperative to jihad seriously. At the moment, they are mostly intimidated into silence, unfortunately, by those who do take that imperative seriously. Any leader in a Muslim nation who makes an attempt to moderate the vision...Sadat comes to mind...is at risk for his life.

And a bit off topic...but one more thing about Iraq and our adventure there.because memories are so short...and focused by partisan politics. I went digging for this 2005 article in my archive yesterday, and this gives me an opportunity to throw it out there...regarding the way that the threat of Saddam, his WMD's and the subsequent threat to US interests was quite uncontroversial in the latter years of the Clinton administration. The Washington Post piece by Robert Kagan quotes New York Times and WaPo editorials from the 1998-2000 years, when they prevailing sentiment was that Clinton policies were dangerous by virtue of his inaction...that he was TOO trusting of UN inspectors...that he wasn't being forceful ENOUGH in taking measures to stop Saddam...that a military action was going to be required to do that...etc. Recall Clinton bombing Iraq for four days based on Saddam's refusal to abide by UN resolutions about the WMD that everyone KNEW he was developing. It's interesting....how all that sentiment changed when GWB became POTUS.

I guess all I'm saying is that we had legit national interests to protect...in addition to the humanitarian reasons for going in there...as well as UN support and the support of a large coalition. It wasn't just a misguided "save the world for democracy" crusade by some misguided neocon, let alone a "blood for oil" venture, as the slogan of the day went for those who oppose the projection of US power anywhere, anytime.

Israel is our ally, BTW, because we share values of freedom and democracy. And if you don't think our ultimate fate vis a vis Islamism isn't tied up with theirs...well, I don't know what radical clerics you've been paying attention to.

Peace

"I believe it is the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting." H.L. Mencken

Oil and gas production sources and technology has changed drastically since 1973. The major producing regions have seen a sea chyange. Oil is sold as an apolitical global commodity by those who want to make stupid ammounts of money. Oil production is no longer a tool of nationalists or any pan-regional power brokers.

I don't think we're there to make friends who'll sell us their oil. I don't think we're there because we genuinely give two shits about Israel or Kuwaitis or Syrians or anyone else. I think we're there, because (according to the numbers in your link), that's where over 1/3 of the world's oil production is, and our fear is that a (further) destabilized middle east would likely disrupt that production, and with it the world economy.

If there is a secular dictator in place as true HMFIC offing every dissodent every minute of his day, oil reaches the market.

If there is an Imam led theocracy in place chanting "Allah Akbar" 24/7, the oil reaches the market.

If there is a military junta in place propping up a titular dictator, the oil reaches the market.

If there is a titular President in front of a theocracy screaming about the Great Satan at every faux forced rally to prop up popular support, the oil reaches the market.

If there is a US-propped government, the oil reaches the market.

If there is Girl Scout Troop # 666 in place, the oil reaches the market.

Chavez used to prattle on and on about nationalizing the drilling and IDK, maybe he did. The oil producers bottom line may take a hit, but the Venizualan crude reached the market.

The market isn't nationalized. It is ideologically blind. It is politically blind. It is blind to social justice. No one gives a shit about any of that. CREAM.

The only variables are whether the major 3 or 4 oil producers make the profit drilling the oil to put it on the market and whether the military industrial complex can make money hand over fist trumping up wars.

As to what actually happens in the oil supply chain? Won't make a damn bit of dif. Too much money to be made. The rest is all just theatre.

I really believe that. I could be wrong but I doubt it.

Last edited by jb on Fri May 24, 2013 4:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Israel can do whatever they want. They can stay there. They can up and re-exodus to Madegascar. They can join everyone else in Florida. Some of my best friends are Jewish. Take Wang for example. I got him on the golf course. I truly could care less. We just shouldn't have to be manipulated into harm's way to prop up their choices.

I also think that we tend to always, always, always overestimate the external threat to crerate a boogeman an dthen we look back at history and they weren't so tough. We prevail.

I personally, just an opinion, think radical islamicism couldn't hold a candle to the old communist threat, and look at where things now stand. I don't agree with any of their non-western values. I don't buy into cultural reletavism. And bash Islam all you want. You will get nary a peep from this guy. But I in no way think for one nano-second that I or any of my generations are going to have to pray 5 times a day to mecca or wear the burka becasue of a radical islamic takeover. Joel osteen is more of a thread to American religious freedoms than any Imam. It's ridiculous to concern myself with that.

The communist domino theory that made our foreign involvement in hot wars in the 60's and 70's was ultimately bullshit. So is the existential threat of islamic fundamentalism if we just contain it and let it collapse under its own weight.

Eventually, if left alone, people will always always always defeat such systems. In fact, the fastest way to let radical pan-arab/middle east Islamicism expire is to put them in control. They will F up people's lives so bad that without THEM having a boogeyman the epople will topple them. Starving masses have a tendency to do that.

Just don't use Hitler as an example of anything, please. He was a total anomoly.

I think we may part some ways on idealism and America's role. Frankly, you may just be a better huiman being than I, dan. I feel badly, but don't think you can save anyone from being stupid if they wantto be stupid. That's the JB Doctrine.

I'd rather rebuild Youngstown and Cleveland than Kabul.

America first.

You are operating on the premise that the mullahs of Iran are rational actors. Based on what I have seen, I respectfully disagree.

Of course they are. Throw the rehtoric outthe window. What have they DONE? And what are their real goals? Their MEANS is fundamentalism like Wahabbism. Their END is power.

Well, we both believe in protecting America's interests first. As I said, they can never succeed in making us pray to Mecca, but then again it only took 19 of them to murder 3000 of us on 9/11...and only our vigilance and aggressive counter-measures have kept them from repeating it many times over since.

I tend to take the loony Iranian mullahs at their word, though...that as soon as they finish developing that nuke, they plan to use it on Tel Aviv...believing fervently as they do, that a fiery conflagration...preferably involving the deaths of millions of Jews...will help bring about the long-awaited return of the 12th imam, and usher in a new era of Islamic dominance, with them as the heroic martyr figures for all of history. They consider that an entirely rational plan. They reject the idea of nation states and sovereignty and all that old-fashioned stuff. And self-preservation is not a high priority for them...especially if they can massacre infidels on their way to paradise. In other words, the mutually assured destruction doctrine is dead, cause destruction is what they're going for, and if they all die in flames too, that's not a bug...it's a feature.

They have just had the most accommodating, extended hand, look-the-other-way-while- they-shoot-down-their-own-people-in-the-streets US president they could ever possibly hope to deal with for the last 5 years, and they spat in his face and kept the centrifuges spinning toward their goal...all while funding and sowing terror all over the world. They may not pose an existential threat to us, but they sure do to Israel. Don't see them collapsing or being overthrown from within the Islamic world anytime soon. So I guess we wait until "never again" becomes "again". Or until Israel decides they can't wait any longer.

"I believe it is the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting." H.L. Mencken

Iran's potential threat is actually real in the form of North Korea. They do have nukes, they have stated they want to turn the sea of Japan into a "sea of fire". They have missiles aimed at our allies. They're as fanatical as any Muslim on the planet.

But it's always Iran.

Always.

You could also bring up nuclear neighbors India and Pakistan, the latter being a much bigger presence in radical Islam than Iran. One coup between some of the most radical hardliners in the Muslim world and nuclear weapons.

Y'all clucked and prattled about how we would bring "democracy" to the middle east after Iraq "The Fall of Tyrants HRMPH!". Well you got it, just didn't plan for them to elect Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood, did ya?

On a popular social networking site a notification came up that vexed and perturbed me greatly. It requested that I support a cause to grant brutally murdered soldier Lee Rigby a state funeral, since he has inexplicably been ordained as a 'hero'. I ruminated over what a ludicrous suggestion this was. My response was to enquire as to whether there was anywhere to sign a petition AGAINST a state funeral for the poor young soldier hacked to death in Woolwich. Is his blood more precious than any other victim of a violent crime just because of the nature of his occupation? Thousands of Afghans, Syrians, Iraqis have not been able to honour and bury their dead following the terrorism acted out or supported by the West. Why should this young man receive more than the standard funeral and commemoration of his life? He certainly should not be immortalised or exalted, like he has been in the media, as anything higher than he was: which is one of many hundreds of thousands of tragic and unfortunate victims of politically or ideologically-driven violence. Petitions like the above and media coverage like we have seen the past couple of days is dangerous and irresponsible. Soldiers have become false idols in Britain and America especially, conferred with the label of 'hero' simply due to the nature of the contract in which they enter. They are not judged on their deeds but on the uniform they wear. They do a difficult and perilous job it is true, but they are aware of the difficulties and dangers; they come with the job. Doctors and nurses do a very hard and often thankless job, and they are ones who save lives, not destroy them. But yet they are confronted with grief, and sometimes even abuse and violence, in A & E wards around this country.The venerated status of our servicemen and women as well as the exhortations to "support our troops" are the product of government and media propaganda. It is how the government keeps dissidence regarding overseas conflicts in check and how they manipulate the people into consenting to or supporting unjust foreign policies. Of course people will respond with enthusiastic acquiescence to the call of "Support the troops" that the government and national media disseminate. It is an obvious sentiment that people will follow and accept without question. But we need to grasp what these rallying cries really mean. Put simply, they are carefully constructed linguistic tools designed to manipulate the masses and manufacture consent. So that "Support our troops" becomes "Support our brutal foreign policy" "Support this unjust war". Attention is deflected from the real issue, which is the wanton murder of thousands by the government for its (not our) selfish interests. The government foments this hero worship so as to justify their 'cause'. It is a curiously brilliant exercise designed to control public opinion through the media as well as an ingenious con trick. Language is a powerful mechanism that can be skillfully manipulated and capitalised on as a method of winning popular consent to otherwise controversial and sometimes detrimental policies. It can be as simple as playing around with nouns so as to impose a menacing image upon or supposed enemies (e.g. terrorists, insurgents), and shroud our own deadly mercenaries in a positive light. Our fallen troops are named, their pictures on our television screens and in our newspapers; sometimes a quote from a family member is included, on how kind and loving the deceased was. However, a dead foe is the same as a living foe, nameless, almost without human characteristic, and of course always and unequivocally a terrorist or insurgent. No mention of the family who survive him. You see it is all a game of control and manipulation. The goal is to manufacture our consent, by attempting to detach us emotionally and compassionately from the deaths of non-Western combatants; soldiers who are dehumanised and depersonalised for defending their land from foreign invasion, a cause thoroughly more just than the one our governments preach. According to the government our soldiers are engaged in eradicating terror, and spreading the liberty, equality and fraternity of democracy. While those who defend their country from foreign invasion are labelled 'terrorists' or 'insurgents', as if the cause to defend their land and themselves is unjust and punishable by their elimination. It is all a con.

I have a respect for soldiers - I served in the Royal Engineers - and certainly do not wish to vilify them and label them as the enemy, or as the ones responsible for bringing Islamist terror our shores. They are just the poor, unfortunate indoctrinated pawns in the geopolitical and ideological games of the true enemy: your government. A government that has put all our lives in danger thanks to their collaboration with America's 'War on Terror'. We became a target as soon as troops set their foot into Iraq and Afghanistan, and the government of the time knew this to be a consequence of involvement in the conflicts. Terrorists cannot reach the politicians, the chiefs of staff or the field commanders so they target civilians for the purpose of enacting retribution. You think your governments are not aware of this fact? This government and the MoD likes to exalt soldiers as 'heroes' for their propaganda and diversionary purposes, but they generally do not have the slightest concern for their welfare. Why is it that the age of enlistment is so young? Well simply because they can easily be broken down at such an impressionable age, and indoctrinated with not only an army head, and a soldier's mentality but also with the fallacy that life in the army is a job like any other. They leave the assembly line to become the warriors of political ideology, no longer answerable to themselves, but to a government and chain of command that inculcates them with false rationale and perverse "sense of duty" rhetoric. The military is supposed to be for national defense, but the West has made them into machines of repression and conduits to further their own interests, and it all rests on the government's careful and insidious conditioning of the military as a collective of heroic patriots.

Or maybe Pharoah, a lot of people were simply embarrassed by the way returning troops were treated in the Vietnam days and like everything else we do in society we go a bit overboard with it. No different than the fellating we do with fireman and policemen, it's not some grand Machiavellian hatched plot, just a lot of folks who saw many first responders both getting killed as well being courageous and saving lives after 911.

This really isn't much different than overdoing the celebrating of diversity. Hell I like people who are "different than me" but Jesus do have to have a giant pot luck every other month celebrating heritage? I am getting off the subject but it's just how things are done in general these days.

Calling it carefully constructed media propaganda is bordering on Alex Jones if you ask me, you are just attacking this from the No-Blood-For-Oil movement instead of the Patriot movement.

motherscratcher wrote:You guys can bust BPs balls all you want, but there was a lot of truth in there.

I read some contrived, albeit well articulated, truths based on a particular POV, but lumping Afganistan and Iraq in the same let's scapegoat the US bucket is simply distorting facts to fit an agenda.

Not to mention, lumping everyone that chooses to honor and praise those who sacrifice and risk their lives to protect the way I get to live as a bunch of followers who are to dumb to see the political agenda at work behind the scenes.

I can revere the military for what they do. Someone else can tell me I should revere the military. That does not equal I revere the military because I was told to.

War is bad. Wish there was none. But if there is going to be one/some you better believe I am cheering for the red white and blue and could give two shits about the families on the other side. Sorry.

Surprisingly no commentary from our resident UK faction about the backlash in the UK after the attack in Woolwich.

Seems like there have been multiple attacks on Mosques, an Islamic cultural center and threats made to the muslim community over in the UK. I guess these acts must not be as repulsive as the airline/passenger incident in Boston where 2 passengers were removed and delayed for a few hours.? And in any event I guess the backlash is directly due to the "American war on terror" so if the British behavior is bad in any way it can be fully attributed to us Yanks.

Unlike Belgium, Britain is still complacently ignoring the gory cruelties of its empire

Maria Misra Guardian

Tuesday July 23, 2002

So the Belgians are to return to the Heart of Darkness in an attempt finally to exorcise their imperial demons. Stung by another book cataloguing the violence and misery inflicted by King Leopold's empire on the Congo in the late 19th and early 20th century, the state-funded Royal Museum for Central Africa in Brussels has commissioned a group of historians to pass authoritative judgment on accusations of genocide: forced labour, systematic rape, torture and murder of the Congolese, around 10 million of whom are thought to have died as a consequence.

This is not the first time that the Belgian empire has been singled out for censure. Back in the Edwardian era, British humanitarians spilled much ink over its excesses and Conrad's novella was corralled into service to show Leopold's Congo as a sort of horrific "other" to Britain's more uplifting colonialism.

Complacency about Britain's imperial record lingers on. In the post-September 11 orgy of self-congratulation about the west's superiority, Blair's former foreign policy guru, Robert Cooper, and a host of journalistic flag-wavers were urging us not to be ashamed of empire. Cooper insisted empire was "as necessary now as it had been in the 19th century". The British empire was, we were assured, a generally well-intentioned attempt to inculcate notions of good government, civilised behaviour and market rationality into less well-favoured societies.

Is such a rosy view of British imperialism justified? Many argue that it is. After all, surely the British have less blood on their hands than the French and the Belgians? Wasn't the British addiction to the free market a prophylactic against the horrors of forced labour? And didn't those peculiar class obsessions make them less racist than the rest - silly snobs, but not vicious yobs? And isn't India not only a democracy, but, thanks to the British, one with great railways? Perhaps there is a kernel of truth in some of this, but there's also much wilful smugness. While the complex consequences of colonial economic policy require extended analysis, it is possible to dispel more swiftly the myth that the British Empire, unlike King Leopold's, was innocent of atrocities.

It has become a modern orthodoxy that Europe's 20th century was the bloodiest in history and that atrocities must be recorded and remembered by society as a whole. But while a Black Book of Communism has been compiled and everybody is aware of the horrors of nazism, popular historians have been surprisingly uninterested in the dark side of the British Empire. There are exceptions, such as Mike Davis's powerful Late Victorian Holocausts, but much else still lies buried in the academic literature. Davis and others have estimated that there were between 12 and 33 million avoidable deaths by famine in India between 1876 and 1908, produced by a deadly combination of official callousness and free-market ideology. But these were far from being a purely Victorian phenomenon. As late as 1943 around 4 million died in the Bengal famine, largely because of official policy.

No one has even attempted to quantify the casualties caused by state-backed forced labour on British-owned mines and plantations in India, Africa and Malaya. But we do know that tens of thousands of often conscripted Africans, Indians and Malays - men, women and children - were either killed or maimed constructing Britain's imperial railways. Also unquantified are the numbers of civilian deaths caused by British aerial bombing and gassing of villages in Sudan, Iraq and Palestine in the 1920 and 1930s.

Nor was the supposedly peaceful decolonisation of the British Empire without its gory cruelties. The hurried partition of the Indian subcontinent brought about a million deaths in the ensuing uncontrolled panic and violence. The brutal suppression of the Mau Mau and the detention of thousands of Kenyan peasants in concentration camps are still dimly remembered, as are the Aden killings of the 1960s. But the massacre of communist insurgents by the Scots Guard in Malaya in the 1950s, the decapitation of so-called bandits by the Royal Marine Commandos in Perak and the secret bombing of Malayan villages during the Emergency remain uninvestigated.

One might argue that these were simply the unfortunate consequences of the arrival of economic and political modernity. But does change have to come so brutally? There are plenty of examples of wanton British cruelty to chill the blood even of a hardened Belgian. Who, after all, invented the concentration camp but the British? The scandalous conditions in British camps during the Boer war, where thousands of women and children died of disease and malnutrition, are relatively well known. Who now remembers the Indian famine-relief-cum-work camps, where gentlemanly British officials conducted experiments to determine how few calories an Indian coolie could be fed and still perform hard labour? The rations in these camps amounted to less than those at Buchenwald.

There is Churchill's assiduous promotion of schemes to cut the costs of imperial defence in India and the Middle East by using aerial bombing, machine gunning and gassing for the control of rebellion, political protest, labour disputes and non-payment of taxes.There is the denial of free food to starving south Asians on the grounds that it would simply hasten a population explosion among India's "feckless poor". There is the extraordinary British justification for bombing Sudanese villages after the first world war: Nuer women were, officials claimed, of less value to their community than cattle or rifles.

These facts and figures are not easily culled from textbooks on empire. We don't have a dedicated museum of empire, but our nearest equivalent, the new Imperial War Museum North, would leave the impression that Britain's colonial subjects had been enthusiastic participants in its wartime crusades to rid the world of want and evil.

Does it matter that the British are smug about their imperial past, that British atrocities have been airbrushed from history? One can't help thinking that Jack Straw's pious missions to India to broker solutions to the Kashmir crisis might have more credibility if the British had the good grace to apologise for such imperial crimes as the Amritsar massacre. But a more worrying symptom of this rosy glossing of the imperial past is the re-emergence of a sort of sanitised advocacy of imperialism as a viable option in contemporary international relations.

The point of cataloguing Britain's imperial crimes is not to trash our forebears, but to remind our rulers that even the best-run empires are cruel and violent, not just the Belgian Congo. Overwhelming power, combined with a sense of boundless superiority, will produce atrocities - even among the well intentioned. Let's not forget that Leopold's central African empire was originally called the International Association for Philanthropy in the Congo.

Cerebral_DownTime wrote:Y'all clucked and prattled about how we would bring "democracy" to the middle east after Iraq "The Fall of Tyrants HRMPH!". Well you got it, just didn't plan for them to elect Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood, did ya?

But hey, the blood and treasure lost was well worth it.

They never did build that pipeline directly into my backyard...

"When a man with money meets a man with experience, the man with experience leaves with money and the man with money leaves with experience."